Psychiatric Morbidity and Utilization of Insured Health Services

Abstract

This project examined the relationship between three measures of psychiatric morbidity and the utilization of insured health services. The criteria used to define psychiatric morbidity were as follows: • Self-ratings on the Cornell Medical Index of a randomly selected sample of the population. • Medical care insurance diagnosis of psychiatric illness by the community's physicians. • Psychiatric diagnosis by a psychiatrist. In all instances psychiatric morbidity was related to ‘high utilization’ of insured services, using dollar expense as the criteria. The significance of this is discussed.